Los Angeles Lakers dominate the Houston Rockets to win two straight

The Los Angeles Lakers continued on their quest to wash the taste of that wasted 26-point lead that led to a loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder earlier last week. After allowing the Cleveland Cavaliers to hang around on Friday, the Lakers showed progress in controlling bad teams by beating the Houston Rockets 95-85. The game was not as close as the final score indicates due two instances of the Lakers letting their foot off the gas in the third and fourth quarters.

A special Lake Show Life shoutout to Frank Vogel for trying the small defensive lineup benching DeAndre Jordan and inserting Avery Bradley into the starting lineup.

The good from the Los Angeles Lakers’ win:

Carmelo Anthony is a walking bucket these days!

The original Melo has been on fire the last couple of games. After rebounding well against the Cleveland Cavaliers, he dropped three shots from behind the arc for 9 points in five minutes of action. He carried his hot hand into the second quarter finishing with 14 points in 14 minutes in the first half.

Carmelo Anthony is not the “specialist shooter” the Los Angeles Lakers was looking for in the offseason, but no one took into account how good this guy is at filling it up when he doesn’t have two or three players in his shooting space like he had for most of his career. LeBron is drawing the attention and Anthony is knocking down the wide-open shots when they are there. He led the team with 23 points off the bench.

He now stands in the Lakers record books with 20 made 3 point shots in his six games.

LeBron James and Russell Westbrook ran the offense as the Lakers intended in the offseason.

If a Lakers fan looked in the box scores, the numbers from these two players won’t bowl you over. One of the reasons is Carmelo was going crazy and the other reason was the Rockets turnovers fueled most of the Lakers offense. But looking beyond that, that’s the idea. They both read the game and allowed their games to come to them while allowing the other to operate.

• Russell Westbrook: 20 points (9-22 shooting!), 8 rebounds, 9 assists.
• LeBron James: 15 points (6-19 shooting!), 7 rebounds, 8 assists and 4 steals.
• Both took care of the ball with only two turnovers apiece.

Against bad teams, this is how these two need to play and prepare for better teams. Both players have the talent to dominate a game, but both need to find out how much they need to sacrifice for this championship run to work.

They played the Houston Rockets and they get to enjoy the fun again Tuesday. 

This game wasn’t like the debacle when James Harden made the announcement he wanted to be traded ASAP by the way he played during the Lakers’ second beatdown in a matter of days last season, but it was just as ugly. Lakers fans could have watched the South Bay Lakers beat this bunch. It seemed every time they turned the ball over, the Lakers turned them into points. They looked more like the Houston Cougars than the Houston Rockets.